September 2010 Saints and Seasons (trying again)

Saints and Seasons 

I was eating breakfast on another gray Sunday morning. Looking up, I saw two hummingbirds dancing around the feeder; one landed and it looked like the other would too. Generally, if one is busy eating, the second comes dive bombing down and chases the other away.  Occasionally though, especially if two arrive simultaneously, they will dance around each other for a bit and finally light on either side of the feeder and be at peace.  It’s a wonderful moment when two share the feeder. But that didn’t happen this time. For some unknown reason, the one decided that the other had to go, and the chase was on!

I thought, this is just the way God sees us. He doesn’t get too disappointed at our lapses. God does not demand perfection - we do. The wise AA program calls for “patient improvement,” and that in itself is hard enough. 

God the Creator of it all, delights when the two hummingbirds sit at the feeder, each drinking of the life-sustaining nectar. But He doesn’t expect it. God knows our human nature; having both created it and shared it, when one chases the other off, God knows there will always be another time, another chance. 

The saving grace for us - and where the analogy breaks down - is the we are humans, being, not hummingbirds. We can grow and change and choose. We can, and do, take lessons from the moments when we sit together at the feeder as well as from those times when we drive the other away - or are driven. And we can choose which course to take. Sometimes. At other times, something happens and in a split second, we are off!  Old reactions set in, old patterns get triggered and we transgress by “what we have done and by what we have left undone.” But even then, we are given the grace to stop and see what happened, which is why confession, and absolution, are woven into our daily and weekly worship. God doesn’t expect us to be prefect, only willing to begin again. 

But the vision of God sitting and watching His creation  not just with tolerance but with delight, not just with forbearance but with a chuckle, and most of all with ineffable love, will stay with me for a long time.

Louise Buck        September 2010

@ Saints and Seasons is a monthly (except for August) column written by Louise Buck for "The Gospel at Saint David's," the monthly magazine of St David's Episcopal Church, 5050 Milton St, San Diego CA.